Category Archives: Compassion

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As difficult as the news is every day, as much as the media has a need to keep us informed of dark, depressing matters, there is equal goodness all around us. (I know that a good deal of us have suffered losses that can only be measured in tears, and that the pain can linger. When enough time has passed, we take little steps back into life, working up the courage to take a swing at living again. I guess that’s the point–that we all know what loss is and yet, most of us get through it and carry on anyway. Really, what are our alternatives?)

Here my amazing online friends share here their tender stories of connection, compassion and love, for wherever there is union and healing, there is Love. We must all remember our own stories of care and goodness, both given and received, and we must share them, for they are needed now. We must share our stories until they become a Love-tsunami more powerful than any of the physical kind. The miracle of being alive now is the miracle of healing. We are all called to share great Love and oneness with each other and All That Is. We are called!

“KARMA: In Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, karma is the quality of a person’s current and future lives as determined by that person’s behavior in this and in previous lives.”

I remember when I first considered the ideas of reincarnation and karma. The suggestion that I had lived before felt instinctively right (and helped me to better understand certain dreams) but when I heard the word karma I thought, “Ouch!”

I wonder who first said, “What goes around, comes around,” putting the Bible’s teaching, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” into modern lingo? Haven’t we all thought it, “What goes around, comes around, idiot,” especially at school and work, and in the car?

Above and beyond our thoughts of, “You’ll get yours,” what is karma? I think of it as a reflection of our state of being, a sum total of our level of consciousness as we enter a lifetime. Though we are given the free will to choose between basic styles of living–inflicting violence or bestowing blessings–the universe does seem to have some laws of its own, such as, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It makes sense that we end up as, and with, the results of what we ourselves have done. How’d you like to get randomly stuck with someone else’s karma? Can you imagine the bitterness we’d instinctively feel?

I have read about a place in the invisible world called the Akashic Records, where all of our thoughts, feelings and actions from every lifetime are said to be recorded. One night I had a dream and was in a giant room filled with row upon row of stacked floor-to-ceiling drawers. I walked to my drawer, pulled it open and took out several cards from the middle, each one showing me records from different lifetimes. “Holy sh-t!” I thought and shoved my drawer closed and awakened instantly.

So, what are we to do about what we have done? We are to use each successive lifetime to learn and grow, to ‘know ourselves,’ and eventually return to our heavenly birthplace. This growing is not forced upon us, but the reaping part of, “As we sow, so shall we reap,” becomes much darker and heavier if we don’t. There are some wonderful ideas about letting go of the past, and changing our lives by changing what we believe and how we live, at the blog, Sending Joy. And while it is true that nothing happens in error, we are all related here on Earth and thus share a group-karma, which can be elevated through love and compassion and giving our best selves to each other. Every kindness, and every act of forgiveness, makes us better people and heals the whole.

The Christian Holy Week, I am reminded, begins on Sunday, March 29th, with Palm Sunday. We will remember that Jesus Christ rode through the gate of Jerusalem on a white donkey, to ecstatic crowds littering his path with palm branches. According to Rudolf Steiner, a spiritual-world researcher, Christ knew their cries weren’t real, that in a few days they’d call for his death. They were caught in the moments, not grounded enough to understand what was happening. Of course, even Christ’s disciples didn’t know what was happening then, so how could the rest of us?

The next day, Monday, he stopped by the Temple and the Christ reminded the merchants that God’s house was not created to build businesses. Rudolf Steiner writes that this made a lot of powerful men angry so that, when he returns to town on Tuesday, members of every group he offended are waiting with their trick questions. He answers them strongly, and then shares a story and they begin to understand it—they are going to kill him. Tuesday night, his stories to the disciples become more than stories. They can see the great dividing line being drawn among humanity: Some will serve the light, others the darkness. They begin to understand how much he needs them to carry Cosmic Love into the future.

Wednesday night, he has dinner with his closest friends. Mary Magdalene washes his feet with oil and her long hair. On some level, she knows who He is and what is coming. Thursday night, Jerusalem is quiet as all head indoors to prepare for Friday’s Passover celebration with family members. Like everyone else, Christ Jesus enters a quiet room, with the disciples, his closest relatives–in Spirit. They will have their last meal with him that night, though they know it not. Continue reading →

Sometimes my thoughts get going and I wonder things like, “If we could meet up without our bodies, what would we look like? Do our essences still have strong passions, strong opinions? If we couldn’t arm wrestle to see who’s right, would we, um . . . shoot fire from our eyes?”

Or, would we, from the perspective of our souls, see how thin our opinions are? Without skin, we couldn’t be racists. Without bodies, we’d see what it is we all have in common, what we really are, every single one of us: souls, cells on God’s body. In life, we may have super-powered our way to the ‘top,’ but without bodies, who’s at the top of the heap? God–to show us. If we find ourselves in a lifetime without the support of a loving family and the opportunity for a good education, who’s at the bottom after this life? God–to hold us.

I am very happy to post this information about a new film that details the life of Paramahansa Yogananda. I cannot wait to see it myself, for it was the writings of the Swami from India that opened my heart to Jesus Christ. Just as Christ did, Paramahansa Yogananda embodied divine love on Earth.

On January 5, 2015, tens of thousands of yogis and spiritual seekers around the world will commemorate the anniversary of Paramahansa Yogananda’s birth. Yogananda (author of the acclaimed spiritual book Autobiography of a Yogi) has been hailed as the “Father of Yoga in the West” for his pioneering role in making known India’s ancient philosophy of Yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation.

Just as Yogananda (1893-1952) filled lecture halls to capacity across the country in the 1920s and 1930s to teach the techniques and benefits of yoga meditation, the film about his extraordinary life, AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda, is drawing thousands of filmgoers to theatres around the country today.

The award-winning film, AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda, which debuted in October 2014, details the human struggles the Swami from India faced as he traveled across the U.S. during a time of religious intolerance and racism, as well as the profound impact that his teachings still have today. He made an indelible impression on the spiritual landscape of the United States by encouraging people to seek a more personal relationship with God through meditation, a radical idea in the early 20th century. The film’s success continues to grow as spiritual seekers, yogis, and film fans alike flock to theatres across North America.

With so many seekers focused on this beloved spiritual figure’s yoga teachings as a result of the film (which has screened or is scheduled to screen in more than 85 theaters in the U.S. and Canada), the following excerpt taken from his published writings is especially relevant as we enter the New Year:

“If you want to be loved, start loving others who need your love….If you want others to sympathize with you, start showing sympathy to those around you. If you want to be respected, you must learn to be respectful to everyone, both young and old….Whatever you want others to be, first be that yourself; then you will find others responding in like manner to you.” – Paramahansa Yogananda

Another timely work is Paramahansa Yogananda’s unprecedented masterwork of inspiration, The Second Coming of Christ, which takes the reader on a profoundly enriching journey through the four Christian Gospels. Verse by verse, he illumines the universal path to oneness with God taught by Jesus to his immediate disciples but obscured through centuries of misinterpretation: how to become like Christ, how to resurrect the Eternal Christ within one’s self.

This landmark work transcends divisive sectarianism to reveal a unifying harmony underlying all true religions. A groundbreaking synthesis of East and West, it imparts the life-transforming realization that each of us can experience for ourselves the promised Second Coming — awakening of the all-fulfilling Divine Consciousness latent within our souls.

Yogananda said, “In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to earth. He came two thousand years ago and, after imparting a universal path to God’s kingdom, was crucified and resurrected; his reappearance to the masses now is not necessary for the fulfillment of his teachings. What is necessary is for the cosmic wisdom and divine perception of Jesus to speak again through each one’s own experience and understanding of the infinite Christ Consciousness that was incarnate in Jesus. That will be his true Second Coming.”

The 14th Dalai Lama (religious name: Tenzin Gyatso, shortened from Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Dondrub,[2] 6 July 1935) is the 14th and current Dalai Lama. Dalai Lamas are the most influential figures in the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, although the 14th has consolidated control over the other lineages in recent years. He won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1989, and is also well known for his lifelong advocacy for Tibetans inside and outside Tibet. Tibetans traditionally believe him to be the reincarnation of his predecessors and a manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

Like this:

God, he was beautiful. Nobody talked about auras, but his skin almost glowed. His features were perfectly symmetrical. It was impossible to look into his eyes without your heart skipping a beat. Was he a magician? Some thought so because he looked into their souls and they felt it, a measuring of sorts. “Who are you?” his eyes asked. “How have you lived? Do you know your Father?”

He was a teacher of Life, with a capital L—the important stuff. Oh, he loved his family, even had a profession and friends, but only a few wanted to hang with him. He was from another world and sometimes things got spooky, like when he knew what they were thinking. It took courage to stay with him, and a desire to see beyond what they could see with their physical eyes.

Life was hard, but he didn’t seem to care. He wouldn’t listen to their rants and he kept talking about love and forgiveness, beauty and joy. “Let me show you,” he’d say, and they’d sit together in a circle around a fire and listen to his stories. He seemed to be asking them to ignore the problems they had, to live and think in a whole new way, to express thanks to God for everything, even their suffering. Someone always stomped off when he talked of giving thanks for their suffering. “I will not!” they’d shout. “If God loved us, these things wouldn’t happen!”

“This world,” he would say with a sweep of his arm, “is not the real world. This is only a play, created by all of your thoughts. Only those who believe in this world are born here, for we are what we think, what we believe. How could you be born elsewhere when this is what you believe?”

“Close your eyes for a moment,” he’d say. He told them stories, which unfolded in their minds’ eyes. “Love and peace are gifts of your Father. Once you open your minds and hearts to what I am showing you, you will go and show others and they will go and show others. My work is your work. This is how the world will be healed of war.”

“The world will be healed of war?” one man asked, astonished. “How is that possible?”

“Love is irresistible and magical. It spreads in waves and when the wave hits, hearts and minds are made anew. Does this answer your question?” he’d ask.

“It is an answer, but I’m not sure I believe it.”

“Stay with me,” the beautiful, glowing man said, smiling. “And you will see it.”

Inside of each of us exists two beings, both powerful and both seeded with the potential to bring about the end of the other. This has made for some great stories about battles that take place because good and evil live within us. The most potent of these stories stir the inner Spirit, as when sweet and unassuming beings, like Frodo the Hobbit, throw themselves wholly into the quest to save the world from the destructive madness of the monstrous, pounding armies of beings like Sauron, the Dark Lord. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in England around the world wars. I have often wondered if Frodo is a symbol for Jesus and Sauron for Hitler.

How do we humans ultimately choose which fork in the road to take? Is it a million small decisions made over a thousand lifetimes that ferry us at last either to hopelessness and a pit of despair, or into light and the joy of belonging? Is it fair that we must live with the consequences of our choices? In our many lifetimes, we have all been master and slave, criminal and judge, this or that color and race, healer and diseased, wealthy and poor–so that we may ‘walk in another’s shoes.’ Deep within, we know this. We also know everything that we’ve ever done and thought, though we must choose to see it. Thus, between lives, we request the circumstances that will stimulate remembrance and spiritual growth, personally ‘writing’ the pathways of each of our stories or lifetimes.

Why do we do this? We are spiritual beings who fell from the light who have been given some time and space to ‘go Home.’ Between lives, there is nothing more important than getting Home. But here, in these bodies full of desires, with our strong minds, we struggle. If we’re successful, we struggle with ego and the ‘number-one’ fixation. If we’re not, we struggle to survive. Forgetting that we are sons and daughters of the Loving Force that created everything in the universe, we sleep-walk, strive, battle and resist our own truths.

Is this all there is? Near-endless cycles of self-centered decisions and never-ending suffering? Is there no other way? Is group healing possible? Is there a fall-back clause tucked away in the divine manual of Universal Law that would allow for heavenly intervention to end all of our self-inflicted, painful karma?

Would it take a certain percentage of us saying, “Yes to Love!” to allow the rest to come? How would that work? We all have free will, so we likely can’t be swooped up in a love-wave. We would each have to choose. “Given the opportunity to end your suffering,” we might be asked, “would you choose to again become one with God/Love/Universe, to exist and create within the Whole, or do you choose to live in separation?”

This time each year, we Christians celebrate the birth of a child whose divinely-seeded mother was forced out of her town just prior to her son’s birth, and when her time came, she found only a barn. Why? Men of power feared even the thought of a man who would become a king appointed by God. Even those who had been expecting a savior king rejected him, for they knew what they did not want. “We don’t want a king of peace. Give us a king who will fight against this injustice!”

We have always misunderstood ‘God,’ haven’t we? We’re here, caught up in a literal rat race, complaining every day about what is lacking in our lives and in others’ lack of character and their human foibles. Haven’t we all wondered, “How could our country have fallen so far? How could God allow all the evil in the world?” What is evil to you may be different than what is evil to me, but what is evil to God? (Or Goddess? as the case may be.) I suspect it is anything that keeps us separate from our true design—conscious oneness with our Loving Creator, our Loving Natures, our inner Peacemakers.

Spiritual masters have written that the evil within us, our dark sides, may have been a glitch in the free-will design. Others have taught that the evil in the world (domination and war, immeasurably destructive greed, rampant deviancy and cruelty) is necessary. Why? Because when everything ‘comes up roses,’ we don’t seek God—and finding God within ourselves is why we’re here.

Every so often, though, we humans go so far out of control, a divine being comes to Earth to redirect us onto ‘the path Home.’ God became man, Jesus Christ, for just that reason. Isn’t the story of the angels rejoicing above the manger, the three wise kings directed there by a star, the shepherds in the fields, even the nearby animals, all coming to be with him, truly beautiful? What a welcome he received!

But it didn’t last long. I recently read somewhere that when Jesus Christ realized he had failed miserably in his invitation to us for oneness with His Father, he had no choice but to sacrifice himself. And though some don’t believe that ‘he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven,’ I doubt the true spirit of the Christmas/Easter Love Story would still have so much effect on our hearts if he hadn’t.

But, what is the point now? When I think of post-Jesus Christ history, all the crazy dictators and all the warring over land, wealth, power—think of just Hitler and Stalin alone and your jaw drops—what does Jesus Christ mean in this context? How will the message, “My Father loves all of you. To know this, put Him first and then love your neighbor as you do yourself,” ever get through our thick, brick me-first walls? Maybe the answer is now in a tipping-point:

God created us and gave us free will, probably because children of God, made in His (and Her) image with souls,minds and hearts, cannot be God’s children without free will. Certainly, however, God has thought, “Dang it all!” many times since. Maybe when God became a man, for a truly personal experience for everyone, our Creator thought, “That ought to do it!” But more death has been caused in wars over religion than all other motives combined.

It seems now that peace is up to us. We must bring it forth from our God-souls. Something stirs across the Earth—and from within our dear Earth Mother, whose every particle of being reflects divine love. Something is, at last, touching our hearts and minds on a group level. When enough of us tire of the ego-tripping and the fierce competing that crushes our brothers and sisters, we will reach a tipping point and a planetary shift in consciousness will occur. Those who put Love first will turn, take the hand of another who will do the same, and together, we will leave anti-Love and our well-earned karma behind and make the blessed leap Home—together.

I was thinking this morning about the holidays and the working-poor. People working at the minimum wage put in forty hours a week for about $300 in gross wages. Other people find it repugnant that those working for $7.50 per hour apply for food stamps or Medicaid. They say things like, “Change how you think, man and create greater income! Get an education, for God’s sake. Get off the government dole. You are draining the government.”

I agree that life cannot change for the better unless we believe it can. But confidence is in short supply for those raised in poverty, or who were chronically abused as children, or who didn’t make it through high school. We call them drop-outs, but many were passed to the next grade without fully comprehending the last, and by the time they got to high school, they knew they weren’t getting it. Their reading and math skills weren’t up to par. They were lost in science and geography. It is a particularly degrading type of suffering to sit somewhere every day believing you are not smart enough or good enough to take your place in the world.

The working poor often lacked emotional support, too, and do not have the basic life skills, and therefore the confidence, needed to ‘think and grow rich,’ or to attend technical school or college. And where in the world do you get the money to pay for an education if you did not learn what you needed to in grades K-12? No scholarships available for someone who has a hard time filling out a job application. So off to a minimum wage job they go, with the well-to-do often thinking, “You made your bed. Sleep in it.” But all aspects of our economic and political systems are interwoven. If you are well-to-do, I ask you, “What have you done to create or support this system of slave-labor? What can you do to repair it?”

We don’t think about the cost of rent, or food or toilet paper and laundry soap when we have good-paying careers. But we sure think about it when we are working for $7 or $8 an hour. Minimum wages do not cover these basic needs in America. Minimum wage workers are slave-laborers. They will never better themselves, or see their hopes and dreams come alive, because they cannot under these conditions.

Every soul was made by Great Love with hopes, dreams and purpose. My prayer for this season of Heart is that the very wealthy realize they truly don’t need that much and that they can make a real difference in others’ lives by supporting pathways to counseling, tutoring, dental care, higher education or technical school training, and low-cost loans for cars and homes. Let compassion overtake you and be fulfilled by the knowledge that you created enough wealth to bring hope where there is none; and that you have the power to target your aid in ways that truly can change the course of your fellow Americans’ lives.

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Life is like a big boat and we're all in it together. Let's not sink it; let's learn to love and respect each other, to want the very best for everyone. We are, after all, brothers and sisters, children of the Great Mystery of Love.

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